Eating facilities often provide cutlery utensils in dispensing bins, where all customers place their hands into the bins to retrieve a fork, spoon, knife, or spork. Open air bins are relatively unhygienic and can spread hand-carried bacteria and the like to other utensils in the bin or to another customer.
To address concerns relating to dispensing of hygienic cutlery utensils, enclosed dispensers have been used where a stack of cutlery utensils is placed in a utensil compartment and dispensed one at a time on command by operation of a dispensing lever. U.S. Ser. No. 12/247,805, which was filed Oct. 8, 2008, is titled “Cutlery Utensil Dispenser,” and the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes one such dispenser. As described in that application, the dispenser includes a dispensing tray that engages a dispensed utensil and causes the dispensed utensil to rotate from a first orientation to a second orientation as the dispensed utensil slides down the tray.